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Like many leading advisors, UBS' Sharon Sager sits in a corner office high atop a big city. But Sager adds a twist to the traditional: She has installed her husband there. He and three other colleagues work side by side with Sager in midtown Manhattan digs that resemble a cozy trading floor.

Loring Swasey was a branch manager for Paine Webber in 1998 when his wife persuaded him to join her practice as a partner. "I decided it was time to bring in someone of equal or greater talent, and there was really no one I trusted more in terms of good judgment or integrity than my husband," she says. "His passion is the analytics, and mine is the relationships, so one and one equals success."

It plainly does: Sager is a regular on Barron's list of Top 100 Women Financial Advisors. She ranked 39th on the 2012 list. The team manages $1 billion in assets for 80 clients, with a typical account of $20 million.

Sager, 60, has spent 29 years building the practice. She joined Kidder Peabody in 1983 and hasn't looked for a job since: Kidder was acquired by Paine Webber in 1995, which then merged with UBS in 2000.

She wasn't always so close to Wall Street. Sager spent the first 10 years of her life in the fashion and textile world, mostly in sales roles. In 1975, she became the first female sales executive ever hired by yarn company L.P. Muller.

"There were a lot of jokes about where I would go to the bathroom," Sager says. "It was stuff people could never get away with today."

Improbably, the job became the foundation of a Wall Street career. Yarn, it turned out, has multiple end uses, from apparel to upholstery to tire cord. And Sager established a broad base of connections with business owners in those fields. The contacts ultimately became some of her first brokerage clients.

Sager says her gender has always been an advantage in building relationships with clients. While male counterparts bantered with clients about sports, she leaned toward a more personal topic: "I asked people about families," she says. "It was amazing how they opened up to me and got to know me on a different level."

Sager went on to make a specialty out of family dynamics. Newly divorced women often turn to Sager for advice, and they've become a significant part of her practice.

THESE DAYS, ALL OF her clients are looking to Sager for advice on the deepening uncertainty in Washington. And most of them are still dealing with the fallout of 2008. "One of our strategists coined the phrase 'obsessive crisis disorder,' " Sager says. It's the idea that "memories of the credit crisis can come back very quickly when markets get volatile."

BEYOND THE MARKETS, Sager is spending lots of time on tax-related issues these days, particularly as favorable federal estate-tax laws expire on Dec. 31. Until then, taxpayers are allowed tax-free asset transfers up to $5 million. Sager calls it a "planning opportunity of a lifetime," and she's pushing clients to consult with their tax advisors.

She's also suggesting that clients take some gains now in advance of a likely hike in the capital-gains tax.

Sager envisions plenty of volatility in the market until Washington settles on tax and deficit policies. But she doesn't expect any huge selloffs. "There is so much cash on the sidelines, and there are people looking for opportunities to get in."

As Sager and Swasey grapple with all this, she takes comfort in one certainty: "I don't have to worry about rushing home to my husband."